Sébastien-Roch Nicolas Quotes
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Pleasure can be supported by an illusion; but happiness rests upon truth.
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Anyone whose needs are small seems threatening to the rich, because he's always ready to escape their control.
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We gild our medicines with sweets; why not clothe truth and morals in peasant garments as well?
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All that I've learned, I've forgotten. The little that I still know, I've guessed.
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Scandal is an importunate wasp, against which we must make no movement unless we are quite sure that we can kill it; otherwise it will return to the attack more furious than ever.
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It is passion that makes man live; wisdom makes one only last.
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Running a house should be left to innkeepers.
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There is no history worthy attention save that of free nations; the history of nations under the sway of despotism is no more than a collection of anecdotes.
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Nearly all men are slaves for the same reason that the Spartans assigned for the servitude of the Persians -- lack of power to pronounce the syllable, "No." To be able to utter that word and live alone, are the only means to preserve one's freedom and one's character.
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Women bestow on friendship only what they borrow from love.
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Whatever evil a man may think of women, there is no woman but thinks more.
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A good number of works owe their success to the mediocrity of their authors' ideas, which match the mediocrity of those of the general public.
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Swallow a toad in the morning and you will encounter nothing more disgusting the rest of the day.
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Spero Speroni explains admirably how an author who writes very clearly for himself is often obscure to his readers. "It is," he says, "because the author proceeds from the thought to the expression, and the reader from the expression to the thought.
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The art of the parenthesis is one of the greatest secrets of eloquence in Society
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Public opinion reigns in society because stupidity reigns amongst the stupid.
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Most of those who make collections of verse or epigram are like men eating cherries or oysters: they choose out the best at first, and end by eating all.
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Do you think that revolutions are made with rose water?
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What we love intensely or for a long time we are likely to bring within the citadel, and to assert as part of oneself.
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We leave unmolested those who set the fire to the house, and prosecute those who sound the alarm.
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There is as much expression in the feet as in the hands.
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The person is always happy who is in the presence of something they cannot know in full. A person as advanced far in the study of morals who has mastered the difference between pride and vanity.
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We need to be just before we are generous, as we need shirts before ruffles.
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It is with happiness as with watches: the less complicated, the less easily deranged.